Paula DiFrancesco
12 TRI-C TIMES SPRING 2016
GIVING
EXPOSURE TO
AUTISM
Mother’s
photography
documents daily
challenges
D
istance sometimes helps us see things more clearly. A Nikon camera
lens has helped Cuyahoga Community College student photographer
Paula DiFrancesco back up just far enough to capture the beauty of her
twin sons with autism.
DiFrancesco started taking photography classes in 2014 as a parttime student at Tri-C. Her first goal was simply to make better images with her
digital camera. Then she began to understand that photography could be used in
different ways. It can tell a story.
“I used to go for beautiful landscapes, the lake, sunsets,” said DiFrancesco. Now,
she said, she doesn’t aim for stereotypical beauty. “It’s not about posing. The picture
tells something to the viewer.”
TRI-C TIMES SPRING 2016 13
“IT’S NOT ABOUT POSING.
THE PICTURE TELLS SOMETHING
TO THE VIEWER.”
— Paula DiFrancesco
In fall of 2015, associate professor Jonathan Wayne
assigned his Photography III students a project that
required them to create a collection of images on
a single topic. The idea, he said, was to enhance
their understanding of the photographic process by
returning to a subject over an extended period of time.
DiFrancesco chose 8-year-olds Lelio and Leonardo.
Lights of her life, the twins also present her with some
of the biggest challenges a parent can know.
The twins’ developmental problems started to
become apparent around the time they turned 3.
They didn’t speak, and they engaged hand flapping
and other repetitive motions. They didn’t make eye
contact or want to play with others. Friends tried
to reassure DiFrancesco and her husband that
everything was normal, but she knew better.
Soon they were diagnosed with autism and began
intervention therapies. Before long, experts advised
that the autism was profound and that more
intensive treatments would be necessary.
14 TRI-C TIMES SPRING 2016
“MY PROJECT WAS
ABOUT TAKING
PICTURES OF MY
BOYS AS THEY
ARE — AUTISTIC,
BUT BEAUTIFUL
AND UNIQUE.”
Adjusting to this was difficult, DiFrancesco said.
“We always have expectations about our children
— when they’re going to be potty trained, when
they’re going to have friends over.” Now, they had
to toss those expectations aside and adjust to goals
governed by a new reality.
Today, the boys are enrolled in an autism program
in their Cleveland Heights school. They don’t speak,
but they are learning to communicate with pictures
on an iPad. There are temper tantrums, too, and
it’s easy for the boys to hurt themselves. As they’ve
gotten bigger, controlling such episodes gets harder.
So DiFrancesco and her husband continue working
with experts and therapists, and they try to evolve as
their sons do. Every new phase of their life brings a
new learning curve, she said.
When she started photographing them for her
project, DiFrancesco noticed that the camera gave
her a new way to become absorbed in her sons.
Without the camera, she said, “I try to hide myself.”
The lens allows her to see the boys in a new way, and
she can share that vision with others so they can
better understand autism and the fact that her sons
are more than just autistic.
“My project was about taking pictures of my boys
as they are,” she said. “Autistic, but beautiful and
unique, as any other child.”
And her project succeeded, Wayne said. “She
has built on the successive classes she has taken
to capture a meaningful body of work that has a
great awareness of light and composition. Physical,
cognitive or emotional challenges are present in
everyone’s family in one form or another. Seeing
Paula’s images may foster empathy in others in ways
that she will never know. It’s one of the truly amazing
things about photography.”
TRI-C TIMES SPRING 2016 15